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Educating Rita Raises Serious Issues Essay

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'Educating Rita' Raises Serious Issues

'Educating Rita' was voted best comedy of the year when performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980 and by 1983 it had risen to be the fourth most popular play on the British stage. Russell uses humour as a tool to engage and entertain his audience whilst at the same time dealing with serious topics. Without the humour, the play would be less accessible and would probably have reached a much more limited and elitist audience.

The play is naturalistic with a fixed and simple staging, which firmly reflects the real world. The entire play is set in one study room in a red brick university. The room is Frank's environment - cluttered with books representing both the world of …show more content…

(Act one, scene one)

Both characters are dissatisfied with their lives and each has a sense of being incomplete in different ways. Rita feels that she needs to
"find herself" before she has a baby. She is obviously bright and quick-witted but missed out on education because studying was "just for whimps"(Act one, scene 2) among her classmates. Her schooling in a poor area of Liverpool was not conducive to learning as taking school seriously resulted in becoming "different from me mates and that's not allowed" (Act one, scene two) Here Russell makes a telling point about the disadvantages of attending an inner-city school using characteristic Liverpudlian wit. Rita is not blemished by her obvious disadvantages and her usage of the word "normal" to describe her school is comedic. Here, Russell's use of humour becomes more pronounced as the two characters begin to feed off each other. Rita's rather coarse and vulgar humour is countered by Frank's dry wit and the two contrasting styles work well together.

By Rita's standards Frank would seem to have it all, a fulfilling job in a cosy study surrounded by books and overlooking the University lawns. Yet, the academic life is stifling his creativity. He is unable to follow up his earlier success with writing poetry and sees his recent attempts as pathetic and lifeless rubbish. His escape is the whiskey bottle. When Rita bursts into his life she is both a 'breath of fresh air' and

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